


Cassandra Gemini

by TTMIYH



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Sburb/Sgrub Sessions, Banter, Caliginous Romance | Kismesis, Cliffhangers, Cuddling & Snuggling, F/M, Flushed Romance | Matesprits, M/M, Military, Multi, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Phonetic Speech Impediment, Prophecy, Psionics, Quadrant Confusion, Readability Warning, Royalty, Speech impediment, Troll Adam Sandler, hemoflip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-12
Updated: 2019-06-12
Packaged: 2020-05-01 20:09:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19184731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TTMIYH/pseuds/TTMIYH
Summary: Faucet leaks in shadowsSpilling from morgue lancetCaressed your fontanelleI've sworn to killEvery last oneEvery last one





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thescyfychannel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thescyfychannel/gifts).



> "Hemoflip AUs are pretty fucking awesome. How about Karkat's the heir to the whole damn empire—or highly placed, or something, depending on the Reigning Lore? Hell maybe HISTORICALLY mutantbloods were Known for effecting great change and shit, and often would be crowned as rulers. Feferi's Ancestor, meanwhile, is probably the bloody terror who was killed in disgrace, or maybe she's treated like some kind of myth or wriggler story? People think she's still alive and shit, and no one knows the truth. Except maybe seadwellers. Sollux, meanwhile, is trying to keep his stupid dumbass superior alive, there's a lot going on and he is so fucking tired and he also blames his Ancestor for getting him mixed up in All This Shit.
> 
> I'd really like to see all three of them eventually falling in love despite philosophical and caste differences? Also, fancy ass costumes for Sollux and Karkat for sure, and I'd really like to see what would have happened to seadweller culture/fashion/styles after sweeps of being on the bottom of the spectrum!"

Feferi marched forward, traditional manacles of her kind clasped tight to her wrists, fins pinned by strapping cloths, gills fluttering uselessly against the occasional saltwater rag while a burly indigoblooded guard with a broken horn hauled her as politely as possible down the halls. His glasses glinted in the light, and she looked up at him, testing his figure in her think pan. How easy would it be to subdue him, should she find a way out of her bindings? A second guard's hands brought the rag to her neck again, and she breathed easily for a moment, just a moment. This one, olive, light, wiry. Not built for movement the way he was. She was built for fighting, he was built in the same way a construction drone was -- could she take  _two_ of them? Like the rest of her kind, her strength was prodigious, but something told her that the indigo might be able to match her. Long enough for someone to sink a knife in her gills.

It wasn't all the time a seadweller got brought to the Imperial Palace, after all. But the first Peixes in a couple thousand generations was worth a trollnapping in the middle of the day, she supposed. Her wrists uncomfortably squished between hyperbolic metal lines shaped into her symbol. Even if she spent her days underwater in hemoanonymity, word had to get out eventually that a Cleric had been born in the Brooding Grottos. Feferi idly wondered to herself if she'd have the opportunity to kill the Emperor. How hard could a mutant be to kill, especially one derived from an extinct caste? These indigos and olives and purples paled physically to Feferi, and they were only a couple notches higher on the rung. She didn't doubt for a second that she could break the Emperor in two with her bare hands, given the opportunity to do so.

The indigo troll pushed open the ornate set of double doors, bound in cleansed, polished, abundant iron, wrapped into imposing gates controlled by intricate machinery. The oliveblood pushed her in a little, enough that, combined with the element of surprise, Feferi stumbled into the throne room of the Emperor himself. Karkat Vantas, and his right-hand lackey, Sollux Captor. 

Oh, how she despised them.

The throne room was large, almost cathedral-like, decorated in rusts and yellows and bright reds and greens, taking on the appearance of some kind of vivid forest of metal in the ventral equinoxes, complete with sculpted false petals and leaves. Veins, rich and lime-green, pulsated along the wall, weaving in and out of the metal branches and trunks to complete the latticework of biotechnology and metallurgy, a cage surrounding what was essentially a particularly ostentatious carpet-path to an equally ostentatious throne. Rumor had it that the current forested appearance of the inner halls of the Emperor's castle-state were leftovers from a lowblooded girl he was sweet on. Some kind of memorial to her memory. Who gave a shit?

Feferi stared up at them for a good, long while, her fins twitching against their cloth prison. Sollux turned sideways to say something to Karkat, and Karkat turned his head sideways to say something back. He was dressed in his traditional garb, of course, the skintight black-and-red uniform stolen from the Fuchsias when his kind overthrew the seadwellers so long ago. That was what Feferi was taught, at least, in hushed tones and drone-avoiding whispers from the lowbloods around her. That His Ruthless Harvesting was a usurper, and that in a just word, the Fuchsia caste would be on top, with Feferi's descendant on the top of the pyramid. For some reason, amongst her kin, her sign commanded respect. She never understood it. Sollux was dressed similarly, so the voices of her brothers and sisters echoed in her head. Usurpers. Usurpers.

Then, Karkat opened his mouth to yell. "What's the fucking holdup?"

Feferi couldn't have deflated harder if someone poked her with a needle. Propaganda broadcasts and schoolfeeds had made the Emperor sound like some kind of unflappable badass, the kind with a dark, sexy growl, but here he was, with a voice that was high and reedy and strained. If Feferi knew who Abraham Lincoln was, or how his voice was described to have sounded, she would've compared the two. Like a flute with oomph. A countertenor with gravitas. The sound of a bell tumbling down a flight of stairs and comedically dinging on the dining room table corner in the meal block. "Don't waste any more of my time, Cleric. You've already burnt so much of my precious oxygen like a matchstick under a cup just by being here. Let's not burn any more than absolutely fucking necessary."

Sollux sighed and immediately slapped Karkat, his eyes glimmering with red and blue light behind their candy red goggles. The sound was resounding, much like a bell tumbling down a flight of stairs and then comedically dinging on the dining room table corner in the meal block, leaving traces of its prior noises lingering in the air in much the way that an odorous processed dairy good would. Feferi braced for the worst, cringing up slightly in preparation to see a sickle entering the Guardian's throat, but instead, Karkat just rubbed the back of his head and she  _thought_ she heard him say sorry? W-was she hallucinating?

"C'mon, Peixeth. Jutht thtart walking already." Sollux lisped. There, now that was a voice befitting a member of the royal court, a voice she could get behind. Not quite basso profundo, but hovering in around that family. "Don't make thith any harder than it hath to be."

Feferi squeezed her hands together a bit, trying in vain to bust out of her manacles for the thirty-eighth time that night. As she wordlessly walked forward, part of her wondered what time it was outside. Had the sun begun to rise, signifying the need for a fresh sopor bath? Or was she early in the evening, when the others were waking, bathing in the three-mooned light of the night? Neither of the two trolls in front of her offered any hints as to the nature of her captivity or condition. She stepped forward, defiantly, and then bent down to present the back of her neck. For the first time in a while, she spoke, her voice hoarse from disuse. "There. I walked. Let's get this over with."

When nothing came, no pointed blade catching itself in the back of her throat, she looked up from her periphery. Two of the most important trolls in the entire empire, and here they were, staring at her like she had three heads. "Well? Are you going to EXECUTE me or not?"

Karkat looked at Sollux, who looked back at him. The air was still and silent once more, until they both burst into raucous laughter at pretty much the exact same time, flicking telekinetic sparks flying from Sollux's body, stinging like the tips of a battery when they flicked towards Feferi's skin, Karkat's palms slapping at his thighs and knees as he complained about not being able to breathe. Feferi stood back to her full height, which was about a foot taller than Karkat and roughly the same height as Sollux, and scowled as deeply and sincerely as she could. "What? What's so finny? I thought you were going to cull me for being a threat?"

"What, you?" Karkat shouted, almost directly into her face. Shout-laughed, little flecks of spittle flying out of his guffawing mouth. "Why would we-- Sollux, why don't you just--"

Sollux turned his hand upwards, his palm facing the ceiling, little crackles of blue-red electricity flitting between his fingers like bloodgnats on a humid day. He squeezed his fingers tight, and Feferi doubled over, a blooming, spiking pain in her shoulders as her body attempted to curl inward, if only for a split second. "I don't know who taught you that you were tough thhit, but I can atthhure you, you're not." Sollux taunted, releasing the psionic stranglehold on her limbs. There was a loud, metallic popping sound, and her manacles clattered to the ground.

She immediately lunged for it. Sharp teeth bared, ripping the bindings from her fins with her hands, she got a good four inches away from ramming her fist through Karkat's throat before she paused mid-air, like a video stopped for mealtime. "Hey, KK, wanna take a bet on how long it taketh for her to actually get a hit on you? Like, how many timeth?" Sollux inquired, his hand still hovering, pointer and middle finger outstretched with the rest loosely curled beneath.

"No, why the fuck would I want to do that? To even follow up on the bet would necessitate that you don't do your job, and that I possibly get assassinated by a psycho seadweller. Think before you speak, you absolute bulgesniffing buffoon." Karkat replied, furrowing his brow in exaggerated annoyance at the antics of his supposed bodyguard. 

"Yeah, becauthe the answer'th 22." Sollux said, proudly, floating Feferi a couple of feet away before depositing her back on the ground. Undeterred, the second she was freed from her psionic prison, she went at it again, springing maybe an inch off the ground before she was stopped.

"You answer every number-based bet with 22, you predictable hack. Anyway, I say 16." Karkat said, with the blasé air of someone who has survived a thousand and one assassination attempts, and was due to survive a thousand more. Sollux set Feferi down on the ground, leading to one more attempted pounce, but on the third time, she finally gave up, slumping to her knees.

"What do you  _want_ from me?" Feferi wailed, half-frustrated, half-anguished. "Are you going to cull me or just act dumb in front of me?"

Karkat sighed, letting his royal palm make acquaintance with his head, a somewhat common occurrence for him these days. "Fuck, chill. Do you want to get to the point that badly?"

" _Yes!_ " Feferi yelled, trying to claw for Karkat's hand as it reached forward. Her claws paused mid-swipe, she resorted to gnashing with her teeth until his fingers came into contact with her hair, and she felt something warm and fuzzy flitting through her skin, from the top down. She felt the adrenalin draining out of her in calming waves, while Karkat's short-cut, nubby little nails scratched at her scalp. Every scritch and touch sent reverberating echoes of peacefulness into her aural canals, letting them bound and bounce around. Fuck, were candy-reds related to limebloods? How much stupider could she get, forgetting about important details like that? All the fight left her in an instant, the soft, whistling shushes of a patient, if foul-mouthed, emperor entering her brain and sinking in like a sponge. Feferi had been mind controlled by a cerulean before, and she had even experienced the horror of chucklevoodoos, but nothing was so thoroughly disarming as this all-encompassing warmth, a thousand blankets stacked on her shoulders and a saltwater scrub across all her body.

Feferi almost passed out, sucking in deep lungfuls of air once Karkat removed his hand from her messy, tangled locks. She fell forward, just barely catching herself on her wrists and forearms, looking back up at him, dazed and dizzy. "Fuck, did I overdo it?"

"I think you may have knocked her out, tho, yeth." Sollux replied. Feferi wanted to protest, that she wasn't  _quite_ asleep yet, but all she managed was a loud grunt. "Or maybe not."

"You know I hate doing that to people, now we have to wait for her to wake up and it's gonna be a whole federal fucking affair." Karkat sighed dramatically, letting his hand flop into one chin, arm rested in a comfortable position on his knee.

"Did you jutht lithen to me? I thaid thhe'th awake. Congratth, your weird pathifying thcalp matthhageth, for onthe, didn't put thomeone to thleep." Sollux snipped, flicking his hand up and bringing Feferi into a sitting position, where her half-open eyes could slide wider more easily.

"I wish I could put you to sleep and stop trying to interpret that god-awful lisp. Fuck, can you just go and get it fixed already? It's not like you're lacking for jack shit." Karkat groaned, before waving away the rest of the conversation with a raised hand and an outstretched, iron-plated sickle. "Whatever. Anyway. Feferi Peixes. We're not trying to cull you, you dumb fuck."

"Whhhuh?" Feferi mumbled through heavy, tremorous lips.

"Yeah, that. We're trying to hire you." Karkat finally, finally answered. "To the Royal Guard."

"Whh... What!?"


	2. Chapter 2

The ornate respiteblock of the imperial castle welcomed its occupants from a night well spent doing absolutely nothing of note.

Feferi climbed onto the floor cushion, somersaulting forward to let her tight braid flip over her shoulder like a whip, almost getting caught out underneath her, but arriving on the other side of her forward roll with the style and panache expected by His Ruthless Harvesting's personal guard. The sweeps had been kind to her in a way that they hadn't quite been to her charge - while he grew an occasional dark crease and a wrinkle, her skin was still smooth as the day they had met face-to-face, and Sollux fared little better. She had long since given up her dreams of assassination, of taking the throne back, although it wasn't either of the two of them that had convinced her. A trip, a conversation, and a short-lived moiraillegience with the Emperor's personal seer had clarified matters significantly.

It still took a couple of months of convincing, Terezi aside. It wasn't like she lived in squalor anymore, amongst a crowd of millennium-aged seadwellers all telling her stories about how she was chosen to kill the Emperor, just by her sign. She wasn't thrown in the dungeon after her initial refusal, just pestered a couple more times and then taken by Nepeta and Equius (as she now knew them) to a cushy prison cell with enough amenities that she could, realistically, live there perfectly comfortably for the rest of her days. She was more of a guest of honor than a prisoner, political or otherwise.

It was all in the prophecy - either she'd kill the Emperor, start a coup, and have the seadweller population violently stamped down, or be killed by the Emperor, become a martyr, and incite a bloody rebellion that would ultimately leave Alternia uninhabited. It took a while for her to be convinced, and maybe she was only convinced from the care, or maybe on some level they were appealing to some empathetic nugget deep inside her soul, but convinced she became. The Emperor could not die, she could not die, and the best chance she had of living was to remain by the Emperor's side, the most heavily guarded place on Alternia.

To anyone with even a passing knowledge of romantic comedies, such as the Emperor himself, what happened next was almost uncomfortably predictable. A genre-savvy individual might even call it inevitable.

Sollux levitated into the room with his legs in a meditative criss-cross, positioning himself exactly a foot off of whatever surface was below him. Feferi watched him idly, leaning back on her elbows, until, to her shock and horror, he levitated himself directly over her lap. Ruby-sapphire light coasting off of him in waves, he cricked one eye open, looked down, and with perfect timing dropped right onto Feferi's stomach. She let out a sarcastically surprised "Oof!" when he fell onto her abs, and quickly shoved him aside, watching him tumble over and over, a gravityless spinning top twirling like a ballerina before letting himself down slowly astride the large cushion.

Karkat followed shortly after, taking care to step around either of the two. With the sweeps that had passed, he had become ever-shorter than the two of them, looking smaller and smaller in comparison while Feferi just grew and grew, skewing the proportions of their group. The respiteblock was decked out in trinkets and filigree, a king-sized recuperacoon relatively recently installed, for... Convenience's sake, let's call it, sitting proud and tall on the other side of the roughly circular chamber. A large hammock was hung from a support pole, a shelf of books, a television, an attached ablutionblock, all the modern amenities.

It wasn't much different from Feferi's previous cell, all things considered. Just less lonely.

Karkat continued his beeline towards the nightstand to grab the remote, only to be stopped by two hands, one per person, reaching out to grab for his ankles. Tumbling ass-over-head, he almost performed the most nose-smashing comedic pratfall of his life, with only the thin resulting cushion of telekinetic energy serving to prevent him from developing a sudden aural blood flood. "Let go of me, you fucking animals." He growled, trying his best to sound intimidating, but age hadn't made his voice any less amusing sounding. There was a reason why Sollux and Feferi typically did most of the talking for him. That wasn't to say that when he needed to be serious that he couldn't get people to listen, but that sort of vocal effort wasn't reserved for the respiteblock in any way, shape, or form. His hands scrabbled backwards towards his matesprit and his moirail, reaching and straining to grab their hands back and at the very least get them off of his legs.

Feferi was feeling magnanimous enough to give him her hand, letting him pull himself up, his ever-scowling face making its first major appearance for the evening. Even when at his baseline level of anger, his fingers were always the first to intertwine with Feferi's, never the other way around. Not that she wasn't trying, per se, but he was just much quicker on the draw than she was when it came to holding hands. Over the sweeps, she had come to discover this facade of fury was really the hard cherry coating on a squishy shell. Squishy enough, at least, that she could suggest a policy here and there for better seadweller rights, and his "I'll consider it" was as good as an e-signed amendment with how reliably it proved to move mountains. It was this sort of thing that endeared her to him, that, at their cores, they were both squishy people who wanted the best for their kind.

Karkat pulled her forward into her and planted a little scowling kiss on her forehead, brushing wilting hair out of his face to do so. She gave him a little giggle and pulled him into her lap, Sollux letting go entirely, before he carried up from behind and formed a cage of affection from which Karkat was unable to escape. Sure, she had seen firsthand their relationship bend a little more flushed than moirails were supposed to do, but who was she to question the Emperor and his romantic predilections?

However, Sollux and her? Firmly black. Firmly flushed. Firmly incredible. She reached around Karkat, intimating a decision to kiss him back, but really just using her reach to flick Sollux in the forehead, with a smug, pointy grin painting her mouth open. He rolled his eyes, or at least made that eyesocket motion that typically accompanied eye rolling with someone who had non-psionic oculars, and ever-so-slightly tugged on her braid, causing her to inhale sharply, just for a split second. Less of a knife-like sharp inhale, and more of a push-pin, or a needle. Karkat leaned forward, putting his head in Feferi's chest, and, incidentally, giving her more room to flick Sollux on the head, a little irritating motion that she discovered gave him the most frustration for the minimum amount of effort. He said it disrupted his concentration on his psionics, so she learned how to do it quickly and stealthily until she was likely the best head-flicker in the entirety of the imperial court.

"Are you two doing that thing where you're blackflirting while I'm  _trying_ to fucking embrace you after a long day of bathroom-break-inducing tedium, again?" Karkat asked. Before, such a brazen pointing out of illicit activities would've made Feferi blush with impropriety - the mere suggestion that the Emperor's crown guard and his right-hand telekinetic were having flushed dalliances of any sort was the sort of gossip-worthy news that would've destroyed lesser courts. Karkat, however, seemed to lack a sense of shame with these sorts of things, or, as he suggested, was "Used to reading about it, it's nothing fucking Alternia-shattering".

So, when Feferi opened her mouth to respond, was it really a surprise that she said "Yes!" with all the enthusiasm of a lusus meeting a freshly pupated troll? Sollux gave her braid another, harder tug, smirking those scraggly, dumb teeth out of his mouth, and she couldn't resist juuuuust slightly moaning under her breath, causing Karkat to turn his head backwards towards Sollux and hissing.

"Stop trying to pail Feferi already and get over here, you voidrot-infested mouth-breather!" Karkat screeched, which all present recognized as his way of saying "I love you, please hug me.". "You'll have  _ample_ time for that later."

Sollux raised an eyebrow, climbing into the V shape of Feferi's open legs and limply throwing his somewhat unimpressive arms around Karkat, resting his cheek on the back of Karkat's head. "Ith that a promithe or are you jutht trying to get me to thtop?" He teased, the very bare tips of his nails resting against Feferi's back. Karkat had now officially become the meat in the sandwich that was this quadrant-smeared ménage à trois double-hug.

"Why are you asking me? Do I look like I'm in control of my matesprit's sex life? I've shown you more than enough movies for you to know why that general proposition, if kinky as shit, is generally and wisely considered by all of the greatest sages, me included, to be a  _bad fucking move_. Feferi, what do you have to say on the matter?" Karkat ranted, his voice taking on the typical tired-comfy-breathy quality that it got when he began to wear himself out, like a game grub low on cellulose starting to make all the 3d models dance and the flashlight lights flicker. "You're smarter than this dumbass, right?"

"I don't know, Karkat!" Feferi replied, interrupting herself by kissing the top of Karkat's head, and then pinching Sollux's hip loud enough for him to hiss a curse out into the world. "Sollux is pretty ef-fin smart! I'm not shore I can accept a compliment of that caliber in good faith."

"Bootlicker." Sollux staccato spoke, yanking her goggles off hard enough to snap the elastic against Feferi's scalp. She let out a surprised gasp, and then narrowed her eyes towards him, hands twitching to start getting blacker and blacker. Karkat put his finger up between the two of them, splitting their gaze in half while they focused on his candlestick fingernail drawing their attention. Two grubs to the same carcass.

"Sollux, the various paraphilias Feferi and I engage in are, as always, none of your fucking business!" Karkat joked. He didn't laugh, but everyone present knew Karkat's joking tone, how separate it was from his yelling tone or his sadness tone, fundamental changes to the pitch of his emotion that came across as inscrutable to those not well trained in translating. There was a reason that he had a reputation as an ornery rage-monster, after all, and it was only slightly unfounded. Still, despite his protests, now that he had gotten across his fundamental message of "Get over here and hug me you dumb fuck, I'm cranky,", he didn't put anything more than a token protest in at resisting their kismesisy flirtations. If things ended up unfolding so that he was in the middle of a Feferi-Sollux sandwich in a more literal way, he wouldn't protest. It wouldn't be the first time, and it definitely wouldn't be the last.

"Tho you admit that thhe'th a brown-nothing bootlicker." Sollux cackled, his low voice raising to dangerously narrow pitches, like mesas sprouting from a deep crevice.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, fucking whoa! Nobody's admitting to any sort of analingus tonight. God, to think I put up with you degenerates on a near daily basis, I don't know how I do it. I must have the fortitude of a beached whale!" Karkat screeched, starting to fail around impotently between the two of them. Such flailing only served one major purpose, however - it caused Feferi to squeeze him harder, and Sollux to enclose his grip tighter, trapping him in a prison of ice cold skin and burning hot... Whatever material their clothes were made of. Honestly, Feferi wasn't sure. She had never asked, even after all this time. Maybe that would be next on her question list.

"About as lively as one, too!" Feferi teased, sticking her tongue out at Karkat when he looked up with her with playful despair in his eyes.

"How dare you backtalk your leader like that!?" Karkat squealed, watching the red and blue lights dance around his vision in tiny little sparks. "As reparations, I'm going to have to fucking  _insist_ that I pick the movie tonight."

"Not Troll Adam Thandler  _again_ \--" Sollux whined, letting out another frustrated "Ow!" when Feferi used her non-dominant hand to flick him on the chin.

"What, not finterested in the best actor in a generation? As far as black foreplay goes, I can't think of a better movie than "In-which-Troll-Adam-Sandler-finds-a-reality-warping-remote-control" yadda yadda for the twenty-second time!" Feferi taunted, grabbing a handful of Sollux's hair and pulling him forward. He responded in kind, finding loose strands and bangs and using them to wrench Feferi Karkat-ward. With both of them poised to headbonk on the same shoulder, Karkat raised his hand, forming a barrier between the rapidly-closing space separating their noses. After the inevitable bonking, he tilted his head to kiss them on the cheek, Sollux, and then Feferi.

"Well good, because we're not watching that one! I'm not in the mood to pour my eyes out like a broken faucet today. We're going to be watching "In-which-Troll-Adam-Sandler-dates-a-troll-with-retrograde-amnesia-due..." this time."

Sollux and Feferi groaned in unison.

* * *

 

Sweeps of preparation past, the young seadweller dons his mantle, an ancestor's memory by his side. Armed with only his wits, he treks.

The Usurpers must die.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the future, I may fill in the gaps between chapters 1 and 2. For now, I am getting to the Good Stuff™.
> 
> I will neither confirm nor deny that I specifically made a treat for scy first specifically due to being informed that mods could see everything and thus had to refrain from spoiling themselves on their own treats.


End file.
